wood finishing

[ackspac]

Can someone give me some pointers on finishing the wood on my AK? I was wanting to try to make it look "blonde" but I have never done any wood finishing before. Any help is greatly appreciated.

[jfowl31]

If you're going for Blonde, my advice would be to strip the finish down to bare wood and hand rub tung oil, or some other light colored oil into it... dont bother with stains, just run in an oil finish and bring out the true grain of the wood.

Tung oil gets a nice blond finish... prep work is the key to good wood work... Take your time, and don't get frustrated with it.

[Rampager]

If you want to go for custom blonde, here is what works for me:

After stripping and a light sanding (and steaming out dings if needed), you can also use bleach to lighten the wood further. You may have to do this several times. I use comet as it has bleach in it and you can mix it into a paste which will stay on the wood longer. I've also mixed the comet into a slurry and applied it to the wood and then wrapped the wood in aluminum foil and let it sit for 24 hours if I have a stubborn wood set, depending on what look I'm after.

If you want it to be as blonde as possible, you don't want to stain it. What I use is Birch Wood Casey true oil, which is a hand applied (poly base) and apply several coats as per the instructions.

[GreenWolf]

Using light shellac, not amber, orange, or the other stuff, will result in a blonde stock too.

[JayGeeWentWorth]

Here's a nice little tutorial on how to strip and refinish rifle furniture:



http://www.gunsnet.net/Linx310/furn_refinish.htm (http://www.gunsnet.net/Linx310/furn_refinish.htm) :book:

[M1 Tanker]

Comet on wood????? They make deck bleach thats made for wood and works wonders. The key to working with any wood to is keep it as dry as possible, the more water that it soaks up, the more you take the chance of it warping.

-Remove the shellac with some steel wool and denatured alcohol or some stripper. That AK shellac is usually heavy.

-Clean the wood with some acetone.

-Bleach it if needed.

-Tung oil, BLO or shellac will work to finish the wood and protect it. Follow the directions on the can.

[Optimus Prime]

My wood WASR-10 came in the standard unfinished wood, so I just did some light sanding and hand rubbed about 10 coats of tongue oil. It really brought out the laminate patterns and has a nice semi-gloss finish to it.

[M1 Tanker]

That's TUNG OIL, ....if I find out you licked tongue oil on that stock I'm gonna worry even more about you. :)

[Optimus Prime]

Well it's alot cheaper if anything... not enough coffee yet I guess.

[Rampager]

Comet on wood????? They make deck bleach thats made for wood and works wonders.

Yup Comet has bleach in it, just like the deck cleaner...you can even use regular Clorox bleach on wood. In fact, I had a guy at a hardware store tell me to save money (on my deck) to just mix regular bleach with water instead of using the more expensive deck wash, works just as good as that's mainly all it is.

I like using Comet on some wood stocks cause you can make a paste with it and it has some grime cleaning abrasives that works great with a scrubing pad, especially on really dirty wood.

With refinishing, it all depends on what type of gun I'm working on as to what look I'm after. With an old Mil-surplus...say a WWII vintage rifle, I'd want it as close to the original finish as possible and I'd be a lot less aggressive, if at all with cleaning. If I do clean up an older gun, I'd use 0000 steel wool and denatured alcohol. Followed by a product called "Howard Feed N Wax" wood perserver, that contains a mix of beeswax orange oil and carnuba that works great on older finishes and retains the original finish, but helps get some oil into the wood. You can find this at Home Depot.

But with newer kit guns like AK's and Cetme's etc., I usually like them to look new (just my preferance). So I usually go all out on these and take out the dings, choose the color stain if any, of my liking and put an over restored finish on them, making them look better than issue. Just depends on what I'm working on.:icon_biggrin:

[ackspac]

Thanks for all the info guys. I really appreciate it! By the way, my neighbor told me I should take my Dremel and polish the inside of my reciever.... Hes an older gentelman....so I just shook my head and said "ok". Does this make any sense??

[Optimus Prime]

It's an AK... so it's not going to make any difference really, not with the looser tolerences and everything.

[Bulletboy]

This is all good advice, there are tons of ways to skin a cat. When it comes to wood, most of them work pretty well, too. Here's a set that I did a few months ago;
http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f258/suckaf00/DSCN2338.jpg

After the pic, I got rid of that brown grip and used a black one. Now I wouldnt necessarily call these blonde, I used a cherry stain but didnt want it too red. Everyone has covered pretty well all the good points on doing this, so all I'm gonna add is something about stripping/sanding. When I use a stripper to remove the old finish, I like the spraycan of Kleen-Strip from Home Depot, and a plastic scraper. The old varnish peels off so incredibly easy, I cant believe its not butter. Then I washed it off with some bleach. Then let it dry, and refinished it. The set in my pic above though, I didnt want to use stripper, because I didnt want to have to wash it and wait for it to dry. Instead, I used my orbital sander (yup, thats right) and some 80 grit, followed by 120 grit, and then 220 grit by hand. It was much faster than chem stripping, and came out real nice. I also used steel wool between coats of finish, which I applied with a rag. If you use an electric sander, the main thing is to operate the sander so you dont end up straightening out any curves, or otherwise screwing it up the contours. Its not that hard.

[Rampager]

Very nice!:thumbup: I'm fixing to do a Romy kit soon too and I'm opting for a color shade like yours. I too was thinking of getting a black PG cause I'll be going more red and lighter than the original romy wood and the brown romy PG doesn't match.

I find going as light as possible to start will give me the best color control, then using red food coloring along with birchwood casey walnut (water base also), followed by the BWC true-oil gives me good results.

[walt-oxie1]

A quick trick to see how a stock will look with tung oil is to wipe it with mineral spirits providing it is bare wood.